Dexter High School Students Shine in Music Showcase

The Music Department delivered its first showcase concert to a packed house at the Performing Arts Center on April 25.

Under the collaboration of three DHS music program directors, Kenneth Moore (band), Matt Deloria (orchestra), and Julie Bassett (choir), the concert featured performances from the symphonic band, the chamber orchestra, and jazz choir, including a powerful finale of the massed ensembles performing Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 and Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana.

The DHS Chamber Orchestra led off the night with sublime performances of Peter Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for String in C, Op. 48 and Die Hebrides Overture “Fingal’s Cave”, Op. 26 by Felix Mendelssohn. Under the direction of Deloria, the chamber orchestra performed with depth as well as with technical and tonal precision rarely heard at the high school level.

After the chamber orchestra, the DHS Symphonic Band led by Moore, summoned powerful performances of Paul Hindemith’s March from Symphonic Metamorphosis, Giacomo Puccini’s Witch’s Sabbath from Le Villi, Gustav Holst’s Song Without Words and Song of the Blacksmith and Percy Grainger's Shepherd’s Hey. As if in counterpoint to their orchestral colleagues, the symphonic band's performances were a veritable tour de force played with great power and exuberance.

Following the symphonic band, the DHS Jazz Choir moved the audience with its performances of Lloyd Pfautsch’s Musicks Empire from “Tryptich," Eric Whitacre’s Lux Arumque and Sleep and closed with Elijah Rock arranged by Moses Hogan.

The three ensembles performed Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and Orff’s Carmina Burana to close out the night.

“Allow me to summarize — Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Holst, Whitacre, Beethoven, and Orff conducted by Deloria, Moore, and Bassett with the chamber, symphonic and choir massed ensembles — there is only one word: epic," senior concertmaster Sho Harvey said about the performnce.